A MAN accused of shooting two men sitting in a car as it reversed along a Toxteth street has been cleared.

A Liverpool crown court jury took less than an hour to find Jamie Morton not guilty of attempting to murder the driver, Jeff Lodge, and passenger Hugh Love.

Mr Morton, who was living in Mulgrave Street, Toxteth, at the time of the shootings, grinned broadly when the verdicts were returned and left the dock laughing.

During the two day trial the jury heard that when interviewed Mr Morton, who did not give evidence, said that he had been in Leeds at the time of the incident on July 20 last year and he denied having threatened the previous day to shoot and kill Mr Lodge.

Eric Lamb, prosecuting, had claimed that Mr Morton had fired a .38 calibre handgun, probably a Smith & Wesson, and shot Mr Lodge in the abdomen and Mr Love in the neck.

Mr Lodge told the court that at the time Morton, 28, was living with his girlfriend, Shireen O'Rourke, the daughter of Mr Lodge's then partner Pauline O'Rourke.

He and Mr Morton had argued over #400 the defendant had owed.

Mr Morton threatened to kill him, he alleged. The next day he spoke to Shireen from a phone in a shop in Granby Street trying in vain to find Mr Morton.

About ten minutes later he was with Mr Love in a hired Renault Laguna when he saw a friend near the Trash and Ready cafe and was reversing towards him when he was shot by Mr Morton, he alleged.

"I thought I must keep moving the car backwards to get away. If the car had stalled I was dead and I just kept pulling away," he said.